About the alleged ergogenic effect of cooling the palms of the athletes hands before the bench press

Don’t do it! It’s total bullshit! Obviously the experiment was not done with an athlete. I did it NOW and it destroyed my heavy training session. Protocol: soaking the palms of my hands in ice-cold water (water with ice and salt) for as long as I could bear it and immediately perform the bench press. Results: 1. The perception  of effort is GREATLY INCREASED (and not otherwise); 3. Concentric failure in the second rep of what wasn’t supposed to be even 90% of that day’s max effort; 4. Overall fatigue. One of the obvious conclusions is that it spoils any high performance athlete’s focus. You can’t keep focus while trying to control your hands inside a bowl of ice-cold water.

Here are the articles:

Stanford researchers’ cooling glove ‘better than steroids’ – and helps solve physiological mystery, too

Palm cooling delays fatigue during high-intensity bench press exercise.